discernment and delight

finding life: Proverbs 8

Wisdom is not so much elusive as hard-won. She cries out in the street far more than she hides in a closet. She is more often mistaken for an unappealing passerby than undiscovered by desperate pursuers. Her beauty is washed out in the neon glare of cheaper glories.

Discovering the life that is in her requires concentration and industry. To the degree that the attention span of her would-be lover is short, she is inaccessible.

Her life and love are costly, demanding that degree of self-sacrifice of which casual paramours are by definition incapable.

That is, you’ve really, really got to want her.

This is how she speaks:

Hear instruction and be wise,
and do not neglect it.
Happy is the one who listens to me,
watching daily at my gates,
waiting beside my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life
and obtains favor from the LORD;
but those who miss me injure themselves;
all who hate me love death.”

Life and Yahweh’s favor are, in the architecture of reality, near neighbors with wisdom. Indeed they can be regarded as cohabitants. If you enter wisdom’s home, you find that the live here too.

For whoever finds me finds life. Like all extravagant declarations, this one is only good if it is true. On the contrary, if it does not represent how things really are, a statement like this is pernicious by definition, for it distracts well-meaning men and women from their task of finding truth.

Yet if true, this extravagance—like a perfectly cut diamond or a late Romantic concerto—is self-evidently a matter of truth rather than an overheated shot at impressing.

Wisdom and life await in the living room, alert and ready to talk. Yahweh’s favor is fixing lunch in the kitchen.